Steve Jobs

Cofounder and former chairman and CEO of Apple

• Born: February 24, 1955
• Birthplace: San Francisco, California
• Died: October 5, 2011
• Place of death: Palo Alto, California

Primary Company/Organization: Apple

Introduction

Steve Jobs was one of the leading innovators of the information age. Throughout his career as chief executive officer (CEO) of both Apple and Pixar Animation Studios, he consistently raised the bar on industry standards in computing and digital media. Jobs's quest for innovation was coupled with his desire to create rather than follow trends, a tendency that earned him the respect of competitors and consumers alike. Jobs's charisma and ability to convince others of the importance of his ideas were a key part of his success.

Early Life

Steven Paul Jobs was born to an American mother and a Lebanese college professor on February 24, 1955, in San Francisco, California. At the time of his birth, his parents were not married, and he was given up for adoption a week later. Jobs learned later that his biological parents did eventually marry, and as an adult he learned that he had a younger sister, novelist Mona Simpson.

Jobs was adopted as an infant by Paul and Clara Jobs. He proved to be a strong-willed, energetic, and curious child, and he was often in trouble. Highly intelligent, Jobs learned to read before he entered school, where he was frequently bored. His misbehavior during one year of grade school led him to be expelled.

Jobs showed an interest in machines very early in his life, and as a high school student he attended lectures at Hewlett-Packard, then a small company in Silicon Valley. There, he met Steve Wozniak, a computer technology expert who became his friend and longtime business partner. Following high school, Jobs attended one year of classes at Reed College in Oregon but dropped out and returned to Silicon Valley in 1976 to take a job at the video game company Atari, where Wozniak was employed. At Atari, Jobs and Wozniak designed video games and other products.

Life's Work

Jobs and Wozniak were part of a group of technology enthusiasts whose focus was building homemade computers and computer chips. Where Wozniak focused on building hardware, Jobs foresaw the marketing potential and appeal of the group's inventions. He and Wozniak managed to sell one hundred homemade computers to a local computer store. Apple Computer was born.

Apple Computer was run out of the Jobs family basement until the company made enough money to move to an office in Silicon Valley. The Apple I computer, which sold for less than $700, proved successful, but the Apple II computer, released in 1979, launched the company to national status. The Apple II was widely praised for its user-friendliness.

Apple Computer became a publicly traded company in 1980. Jobs hired former PepsiCo executive John Sculley to run business operations and oversee the company's expansion. With Sculley's help, Apple established its reputation as a unique innovator, unveiling the Macintosh line of computers in 1984 after nearly four years of development.

Apple's Macintosh line represented a major step forward in the evolution of personal computing. It used a fast processor, the Motorola 68000, and its operating system was fully integrated with the hardware, making it easy to use. The creation of this operating system was a triumph of computer programing, relegating complex tasks to “behind the scenes” software codes that the user did not see.

The Macintosh was also the first computer to use a graphical user interface (GUI), which allowed users to use a mouse to click on pictures to navigate the computer, rather than type instructions into a command line. Coupled with an attractive shell (one of Jobs's primary contributions), Macintosh computers earned a reputation as reliable, powerful, and well-designed machines.

Nonetheless, Jobs became involved in conflicts with Sculley and was eventually forced to leave the company. Jobs's ouster from Apple is attributed to the company's change in focus—moving from home computing to the small business market. Jobs was also obsessed with perfecting hardware technology, which made the computers he designed expensive compared to other companies, particularly that of International Business Machines Corporation (IBM), Apple's primary competitor at the time.

Both the Apple II and early Macintoshes were built to be affordable, and Jobs's insistence on building cutting-edge home computers ran against the company's vision. In 1986, Jobs founded the NeXT computer company to further his ideas about hardware. However, both NeXT and Apple struggled to make a profit because of increasing competition from companies such as Microsoft, IBM, and Sun Microsystems.

Jobs also purchased the computer graphics division of LucasFilm in 1986, renaming it Pixar Animation Studios. The studio generated funds by creating small computer-animated cartoon shorts, then began to produce commercials for major companies in 1989. After several successful smaller films, Pixar produced the megahit Toy Story (1995), the world's first fully computer-animated feature length film. That year, Pixar became a publicly traded company, selling nearly 7 million shares at $22 per share.

Although it was nearly bankrupt, Apple Computer bought NeXT in 1996. Jobs was reappointed CEO of Apple in 1997. He immediately restructured the company's focus, scrapping a number of projects, including the Newton line, which included personal digital assistants (PDAs) and mini-keyboards intended to be used in education. Wozniak, although he had long before been removed from executive decisions in the company, officially left Apple after this restructuring.

Apple suffered significant financial losses in 1997 and 1998, and many predicted that it would go out of business. The company released several poorly received computer designs in the late 1990s. With Apple in serious trouble, it became clear to Jobs that he needed to make radical changes in the company and consider new technologies to market. Turning away from its focus on perfecting personal computing hardware, Apple introduced its first and most famous software release in January 2001: iTunes, a digital music converter and player. This was followed in October of that year by the iPod, a handheld digital music player that revolutionized portable music technology and the music business.

The iPod, when first released, was compatible only with the Macintosh computer, which helped to revive public interest in the Apple brand. Apple released a PC-compatible version of iTunes and the iPod in 2002, which resulted in skyrocketing sales. Apple went on to control more than 90 percent of the market share for digital music players.

In 2003, the iTunes Music Store was introduced, selling more than one million songs over the Internet for about a dollar each. Subsequent generations of iPods, including the iPod Touch, the iPod Nano, and the iPod Shuffle, boosted Apple's reputation as a digital media giant. The success of Apple's digital media division in turn led to more vigorous sales of Apple computers. The company's retail franchise, the Apple Store, was founded in 2001 to distribute the company's digital media hardware, as well as computers and peripherals.

In January 2006, Jobs sold Pixar to the Walt Disney Company for $4.7 billion, earning a seat on Disney's board as a major shareholder. A number of business analysts were surprised by the turn of events, given Pixar's commercial success in comparison to Disney's in computer animation.

In 2007, Apple introduced the iPhone. The handheld camera, cellphone, video camera, and media player with a built-in web browser also runs countless software applications, or “apps,” that are made available on iTunes. A global success, the iPhone revolutionized the concept of the smart phone. Subsequent products, including the ultra-thin MacBook Air laptop computer and the iPad tablet, solidified Apple's reputation as a manufacturer of revolutionary and beautifully designed technological products.

Throughout his career, Jobs's fiery personality and extreme self-confidence often left employees and colleagues fearful, as well as awestruck. At times he seemed to implement his ambitious visions by sheer force of will. Some said that Jobs's approach to business was based on his sense of personal mission more than a desire to be a major financial player in the technology sector or a powerful business. As CEO of Apple, he famously accepted an annual salary of only one dollar.

Personal Life

In 1978, Jobs and girlfriend Chrisann Brennan had a child, Lisa. At first, Jobs denied paternity, but after a paternity test confirmed that he was the father, he acknowledged his daughter and helped in her support. In 1991, he married Laurene Powell. The couple had three children.

Jobs was diagnosed with a rare form of pancreatic cancer in 2004. Because he had a less aggressive type of cancer, his condition was treated rather quickly. During his absence, Apple executive Tim Cook, the company's chief operating officer, temporarily replaced Jobs as CEO. In 2009, Jobs had a liver transplant after suffering for several years with a hormone imbalance. He took another leave of absence from the company in January 2011, citing unspecified concerns regarding his health. It was reported, however, that Jobs was continuing to suffer from complications related to pancreatic cancer. Cook was again named as Jobs's replacement during his leave of absence.

On August 25, 2011, Jobs officially stepped down from his post as Apple's CEO, citing health concerns. Cook was named as Jobs's successor. Jobs remained chairman of Apple's board of directors.

Jobs died on October 5, 2011, at the age of fifty-six. Upon news of his death, US president Barack Obama, along with countless others and media reports, hailed Jobs as a visionary and one of the greatest American inventors. Simon and Schuster released Walter Isaacson's biography of the icon, titled simply Steve Jobs, just days later; it would go on to become a bestseller but received mixed reviews from Apple insiders.

Posthumous Recognition and Coverage

A few moths after Jobs's passing, he was acknowledged by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences for his contributions in developing the iPod and iTunes, making a significant impact on the music industry. Eddy Cue, the software executive who oversees iTunes, accepted the Trustees Award on Jobs's behalf during a ceremony in early 2012. Weeks later, Jobs was officially inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for his innovative and practical products. As he was always intimately involved in the creation of products, over one hundred patents issued under his name have been awarded following his death.

As further indication of the public's fascination with and respect for the former tech guru, a commercial biopic of his life was released in theaters in 2013 while yet another film was planned. Directed by Joshua Michael Stern and starring Ashton Kutcher as Jobs, the film, titled Jobs, got a warm reception from the audience after its premier at the Sundance Film Festival early that year. However, Wozniak criticized the film and it did not fare well at the box office. A second film based on Isaacson's biography, titled Steve Jobs, with a screenplay written by Aaron Sorkin and starring Michael Fassbender and Seth Rogen, is scheduled to hit theaters in late 2015. In March of that year, Apple executives who had been close to Jobs, including Cook and Cue, praised the publication of an unauthorized biography of Jobs written by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli, titled Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader. All of these attempts to authentically and faithfully represent the illustrious life of Steve Jobs, whether successful or not, prove that he undeniably left a lasting impact on society.

In 2022, President Joe Biden posthumously awarded Jobs the Presidential Medal of Freedom as a means to celebrate Jobs's legacy and contribution to American culture and society.

Bibliography

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